Flynn's Harp: Upbeat updates on three '09 columns (12-30-09)

For those seeking snatches of light amidst the economic gloom, here’s an upbeat update on three of the businesses we wrote about in the year now ending as each of them heads into a new year with initiatives that will bring new opportunity to the businesses and individuals they touch.

Northwest companies needing turnaround assistance, new and emerging clean-energy companies in need of guidance for growth, and global beneficiaries of a new micro-giving site will see enhanced economic opportunity in 2010 from two Seattle-based firms and a newly minted non-profit.

Principals in the quiet turnaround group Revitalization Partners LLC have formed a $50 million Distressed Opportunities Fund. They are likely to gain much higher visibility as distressed or capital-constrained businesses learn about the pool of dollars ready to be invested. Alan Davis, a partner in the firm, was the subject of an October column (Google Flynn’s Harp: Davis chose turnaround challenges).

At McKinstry, which was described as “the nation’s green-tech central” in a March profile (Google Flynn’s Harp: Seattle firm nation’s “green tech” central), a new Innovation Center is being completed and readied for its first young green-energy technology company. The first occupant will be selected soon, according to Elsa Croonquist, the facility’s project manager.

And SeeYourImpact.org, created by former Microsoft executives Scott Oki and Digvijay Chauhen, is now operating in what Chauhen describes as a “friends and family” preview mode in India, the first country in which the site will be fully operational by the second half of 2010.

Revitalization Partners is already getting inquiries from firms interested in being considered for investment from what Davis describes as “an initial $50 million pledge of capital to be invested in distressed or capital-constrained middle market companies in the Northwest and British Columbia.”

Davis, who has become what might be called a “turnaround expert” over the past decade or more, explained in the original column his interest in taking companies that are on shaky financial ground and bringing them back. “Once you do one turnaround, you want to do others.”

Davis and partner Bill Lawrence will each likely have direct involvement with companies that they decide are candidates for part of the fund, which Davis estimates will be between four and 10 companies at the outset. But he says their funding partners can provide further funds if the initial amount proves there are opportunities awaiting.

Croonquist, McKinstry’s Incubator Project Manager, says the 24,000-square-foot addition to McKinstry’s headquarters will be ready to accept its first small company in April and could house up to five by the end of the year.

When he first announced the center at a Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce gathering in October, McKinstry Executive Vice President David Allen said the Center will act as a commercialization accelerator to bring new and emerging companies together to foster advancement of energy technologies.

In the original interview, Allen noted that then-president hopeful Barack Obama visited McKinstry in the late winter of 2008 to use the company’s offices as a backdrop for a press conference on environmental change and that, as president Obama has repeatedly mentioned the firm as a green-initiatives leader.

The firm’s growth in the past couple of years has been phenomenal with 45 offices now spread across the country, creating what David (whose brother, Dean, is CEO of the firm) describes as a company whose “shadow is longer than our body” because of its impact on clean and green businesses. McKinstry may actually be the Seattle area’s most successful company right now.

The young firms housed in the incubator/accelerator facility may eventually number as many as 20, according to Croonquist. It may be that similar facilities will emerge in other McKinstry locations, particularly Spokane and Portland, though Croonquist isn’t ready to discuss that yet.

And as the column on the Oki-Chauhen micro-giving site, the vision is of eventually thousands of messengers delivering small gifts or donated items to millions of the world’s needy, each delivery recorded via cell-phone photo and sent back to the giver (Google Flynn’s Harp: Oki vision: micro-philanthropy on global scale).

As with the Kiva micro-lending site after which SeeYourImpact.org is modeled, tips (averaging $2 to $3) from those making gifts on the site will be a source of revenue and Chauhen says about 80 percent of those currently trying the site are actually providing tips.

He notes that the push to begin actually driving traffic to the site will begin in the fourth quarter, after ramping up the number of NGOs providing delivery of the gifts. Then it will be expansion into Africa.

To get a sense of the kinds of giving already going on with this innovative non-profit, it’s worth visiting theSeeYourImpact.org website. The business will deserve dramatically more visibility in the months ahead as its full impact begins to unfold.

Other people and businesses that were subjects of Flynn’s Harp during the past 12 months, including Spokane’s Condon brothers and their unique bio-industrial park, are also going to be heard from in the coming year in upbeat news, proving there are bright spots in a continuing troubled economy.